If I don't go to a painting workshop this year, I thought, I could spend the money on actual paintings and support the same artists without having to go anywhere or learn anything. Flawless logic. I was narrowing it down to a painting of a raw porkchop and one of a dead raccoon, and that is when the man packed up the portable easels and said we were going painting.
We drove over to my mother's house, ditched the kids, and went across the street to Valley of the Temples. I don't have an aptitude for painting buildings, and I've never painted a landscape, so why not start with a Buddhist temple at the base of a rainy mountain? SURE. This is a good idea.
One look at the architecture on that temple, and I started auditioning rocks and puddles to paint, instead. There were handsome turtles sunning themselves and nice frogs loitering in the pond, but the problem with painting from life is that you don't actually have zoom vision, and it is very hard to pitch an easel in the middle of a pond. That pea-sized speck from where you're standing is going to be a pea-sized speck on your canvas. Stupid analog eyeballs.
We set up our easels way in the back, off of the pathway, next to a strip of warning tape and a sign that says DO NOT ENTER, and tourists still picked their way through the mud like goats to get behind us and watch us paint. Whiny children yelled, "I WANT TO PAAAAINT," and their parents looked at me expectantly, as if I would turn around and hand them my brushes. If you are doing a thing in public, you are a public entertainment feature, after all. Luckily, it started to pour just as I was considering flinging one of the children into the koi pond by the ankles for the black swans to eat, and the tourists cleared out for a few minutes. I tried painting in the rain, because oil paint is waterproof, but it turns out that paint boxes fill up with rain and brushes skid uselessly over water droplets, so we finally admitted defeat and went for a beer at the mall, instead.
"To still-life painting!" we toasted.
The guy who should have posed for me
nope
STAY STILL, CLOUDS
Fine.
It was a good day - though next time we're buying a pork chop and a dead animal and painting in the studio, instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment